CHAPTER ONE
All chatter ceased the moment Nina slammed her heel onto the brake, yanked the wheel to the left and then, as she remembered which side of the road she ought to be driving on, hard to the right. The unfamiliar Chrysler saloon groaned and shuddered but barely slowed. Its front wheels struck the dark grass bank, throwing Nina forwards. The car hissed in complaint, bumping to a lopsided stop.
Nina worked her jaw. The silence was like deafness.
‘Everyone okay?’ she said. She twisted to look into the back seat, wincing at the spike of pain in her neck.
‘Shit, Mum,’ her daughter Laurie said, her eyes shining.
Nina’s de facto mother-in-law, Tammy, was sitting in the back seat beside Laurie. ‘Lauren Fisher! We don’t appreciate that kind of language, do you understand?’ She glared at Nina, who understood the subtext: scolding Laurie ought to be Nina’s job. ‘What in heaven’s name are you doing to my car?’
Nina had swerved because there was a child on the road.
Through the grimy windscreen she could see the girl still standing in the centre of the track, illuminated by the car headlights. She stared at the car with no suggestion of alarm. She looked to be around ten years old, certainly younger than Laurie, and wore a cardigan, long socks and a pleated skirt. What was she doing out at this hour?
None of the passengers in the car had noticed the girl.
‘I think your brakes need seeing to,’ Nina said. ‘Is there a garage on the island?’
‘My Bobby never has any problem when he visits,’ Tammy replied in her loud, flat drawl. ‘He drives it like a dream.’
Nina’s knuckles whitened.
‘But Bobby – I mean Rob – isn’t here, is he?’ she said as coolly as she could manage.
Tammy removed her fur hat and placed it in her lap like a cat, then smoothed her hair which had remained unmussed despite the lurching of the car. It was held fast with lacquer, the smell of which mingled with her perfume to make the air in the car heavy and sweet. The Fishers’ scent was probably ingrained into every atom of this old heap. Tammy fussed with her handbag, tutting as she rifled through it, as if the sudden stop might have somehow robbed her as well as startled her.
Nina turned to Tammy’s husband sitting in the front passenger seat. His head was bowed as though in prayer. ‘Abram? You okay there?’
Abram raised his head, blinking in surprise. A red horizontal smudge gave him a third eyebrow in the centre of his forehead. Now the blood began to seep down at both ends of the wound.
‘Oh hell,’ Nina said. ‘Here. Let me help.’ She pulled a tissue from the inside pocket of her jacket, spilling crumpled tickets and English coins as she did so. Abram smiled as she dabbed at his forehead. The injury wasn’t as bad as it looked, only a nick from bumping against the dashboard. Abram’s old skin looked thin as paper; it wouldn’t have taken much to puncture it.
Nina sensed movement at the edge of her vision. The girl on the road. Her small body slackening, her knees buckling. The car hadn’t even come close to hitting her, but the shock of a near-miss must have terrified her. She fell to the ground; her limbs, her torso, then her head disappeared as she slipped into the gloom beyond the headlight beams.
Tammy and Laurie made protestations as Nina pushed open the door and stumbled onto the grass bank. The car pinged its soft alarm as a complaint at the door being left open.
Nina edged around the bonnet, shielding her eyes from the headlights. The world beyond the yellow light was a black ocean.
She squinted into the dark, where the girl had fallen.
‘Hello?’ she said quietly. ‘Are you there?’
She knelt to put a hand on the ground where the girl had been, then felt a fool. What was she hoping to find? A trace of heat?
‘I just want to check that you’re all right,’ she said, unsure where to direct her voice. Her words were swallowed by the darkness as soon as they left her mouth.
The wind rolling up from the harbour was as regular as breathing.
Another sound overlapped it. More breathing.
Nina turned to her left and was relieved to see that the girl was on her feet again. Only her silhouette was visible, blacker than the darkness behind her.
‘You shouldn’t have been on the road,’ Nina said. ‘Were you hurt when you fell?’
More breathing.
The girl replied, ‘I’m okay.’
Nina exhaled. ‘Do you live very near here?’ Then she remembered where she was; the island was tiny. ‘Of course you do. Would you like me to drive you home?’
She took a single step forwards. Immediately, the girl retreated a step, stumbling on the gravel.
Nina held up her hands.
‘You don’t need to be afraid,’ she said. ‘I just want to know you’re safe.’
‘Keep away,’ the girl said. ‘Leave me alone.’
Nina didn’t move. She felt desperately tired after her long journey and her many attempts to summon enthusiasm from a recalcitrant Laurie.
‘Do you want me to scream?’ the girl said, without inflection.
The breeze from the ocean snuck around Nina’s neck, making her shudder.
‘What?’ she said. ‘Why would you scream?’
‘I said keep away.’
At first, Nina’s only clue that the girl was backing away was the sound of her feet, but then she recognised that the black shape was diminishing. The girl was moving downhill, towards the harbourside. Surely there were no homes down there.
‘Look, this is silly,’ Nina said. She couldn’t let the girl continue wandering in the opposite direction to her home. ‘Won’t you tell me your name, at least?’
The girl moved faster. It was hard to be certain, but it seemed that she was still facing Nina, that she was walking backwards down the hill, though the idea seemed absurd. Nina followed, matching her uneven pace. In this stop-start manner they approached a plain building, an ugly concrete structure directly at the foot of the steep hill that hung behind the harbour.
The girl came to a halt at the corner of the concrete building. A slice of moonlight fell upon her pale face. The skin below her eyes appeared cracked and raw. She craned her neck to look past Nina. Nina turned and was shocked to realise that the car wasn’t far away – they had barely walked any distance. Inside the vehicle, Tammy and Laurie were deep in conversation. In the front passenger seat, Abram was staring at the wad of tissue in his hands.
Nina turned back to the girl, annoyance flaring within her. At precisely the same moment as Nina began to stride towards her, the girl stepped backwards again, disappearing into the narrow gap between the rear of the concrete building and the rock face at the foot of the hillside.
Nina swore softly.
‘Please come out,’ she said.
Then, ‘You’ve told me that you’re okay. So you can head on home.’
As she closed the distance to the building, she heard scuffling sounds from the narrow gap.
She stretched both arms before her, like a sleepwalker.
More scuffling. The lightest of sounds, barely anything, but becoming more frantic with each passing second.
‘It’s all right,’ Nina said, more to herself than to the girl.
She turned her head, listening for the girl’s breathing, but she heard only that same skittering sound.